Captain Corelli's mandolin (35 page)

His radio never let him down once. It was a Brown B2. It had only two Loctal valves, it had an aerial that looked exactly like a washing-line, it ran from the mains or by a six-volt battery, and, weighing in at a paltry thirty-two pounds, it was a miracle of miniaturisation.

Dr Iannis packed his pipe with the lethally acrid mixture that passed for tobacco in those days of occupation, tamped it down, lit it, and sucked unwisely hard. The sharp smoke struck him at the back of the throat, and his eyes bulged. He spluttered, clutched at his neck with one hand, and coughed violently. He threw the pipe down and muttered, `Faeces, nothing but faeces. What has the world come to when I am reduced to smoking coprolite? Well, that's it, I will never smoke again.'

The pipe had recently brought him more pain than consolation. For one thing it was impossible to obtain pipe cleaners, and he had been reduced to scouring the garden for wing feathers. He had even bribed little Lemoni to go down to the beach and find them, and this had involved inducing Pelagia to make the little honey-pastries that Lemoni loved. It threatened to become an infinite and unmanageable regress of corruption. He had attempted to cut the Gordian knot by giving up the cleaning of his pipe, but this had resulted in the inhalation of indescribably repellent, ferociously bitter, and appallingly slimy gobbets of cold dottle. It made him feel as nauseated as a maladapted dog chat had eaten chilli peppers soaked in gasoline, and all this just so that he could smoke tobacco that was no less than the equivalent of an amateur tonsillectomy. He felt betrayed and irritable. His pipe was a St Claude that he had bought in Marseilles, and it was supposed to be an old friend. Agreed, it had burned away about the rim and the stem was yellowed and bitten, but it had never before attacked him with such malice. He left it on the floor and returned to his writing: `Because the island is a jewel it has since the time of Odysseus been the plaything of the great, the powerful, the plutocratic, and the odious. The un-philosophical Romans, unenlightened in any of the arts except for that of managing slaves and that of military conquest, sacked the city of Sami and massacred its population after an heroic resistance that had endured for four months. There began a long and lamentable history of its being passed from hand to hand as a gift, at the same time as it was repeatedly being raided by corsairs from all the many corners of the malversated Mediterranean Sea. Thus was an island plundered in perpetuity, an island whose celebrated musician Melampus had won the prize for Cithara at the Olympic Games as long ago as 582BC. From the time of the Romans the only prize for us was survival.'

The doctor paused and picked up his pipe from the floor, forgetting that moments before he had renounced it forever. It was the same old problem; it was not so much a history as a lament. Or a tirade. Or a Philippic. He was struck suddenly by the illuminating idea that perhaps it was not that it was impossible for him to write a history, but that History Itself Was Impossible. Satisfied with the profundity of the implications of this thought, he rewarded himself with a deep draw on his pipe that once again reduced him to helpless paroxysms of agonising sneezes and coughs.

Seized with fury, he stood up and contemplated breaking the pipe in half. He was on the point of doing so when he was vanquished by a sense of pre-emptive panic. The fact was that Giving Up Smoking was as Inconceivable as History. It was clear that there was going to have to be some kind of accommodation between himself and his pipe. He called in Pelagia, who had been carefully spooning the coffee grounds out of that morning's cups so that they could be used again. The coffee situation was as dire as the tobacco crisis.

`Daughter,' he said, `I want you to melt a little honey in some brandy, and then mix this tobacco in it. It is simply insufferable as it is. It is most unpleasantly sternutatory.'

Pelagia looked at him wryly and took the proffered tin. She was on the point of going when her father added, `Don't go yet, there's something I have to talk to you about.'

The doctor was surprised. `What do I want to talk to her about?' he asked himself. It was as if he had gleaned some impressions, some impressions that needed to be discussed, but which had not yet congealed into a set of ideas.

Pelagia sat down opposite him, removed some stray hairs that had fallen about her face by force of habit, and asked, `What is it, Papakis?'

He looked at her sitting there, her hands folded on her lap, an expectant expression playing about her eyes, and a demure smile upon her lips. Her appearance of pretty innocence reminded him of what he had wanted to say. Anyone, and especially a daughter, who could appear so virginal and sweet was quite obviously involved in mischiefs and misdemeanours.

`It has not escaped my notice, Pelagia, that you have fallen in love with the captain.'

She flushed violently, looked perfectly horrified, and began to stammer. `The captain?' she repeated foolishly.

`Yes, the captain, our uninvited but charming guest. He who plays the mandolin in the moonlight and brings you Italian confectionery that you do not always see fit to share with your father. This latter being the one whom you presume to be both blind and stupid.'

'Papakis,' she protested, too taken aback to add any kind of articulate coda to this interjection.

`Even your neck and your ears have gone red,' observed the doctor, enjoying her discomfiture and deliberately heaping more coals upon it.

`But Papakis...'

The doctor waved his pipe expansively. `Really, this point is not worth denying or discussing, because it is all very obvious. The diagnosis has been made and confirmed. We should be discussing the implications. By the way, it is clear to me that he also is in love with you.'

'He has said no such thing, Papas. Why are you trying to vex me? I am beginning to be very annoyed. How can you say such things?'

`That's the spirit,' he said with satisfaction, `that's my daughter.'

'I am going to hit you, really I am.'

He leaned forward and took one of her hands. She looked away and flushed even more deeply. It was so typical of him to make her utterly indignant and then to deflate her with a gentle gesture. He was an unmanageable father, a farrago of peremptory orders one minute, sly and wheedling the next, lofty and aristocratically detached the minute after that.

'I am a doctor, but I am also a man who has lived a lot of life and who has observed it,' said the doctor. `Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid. He gave you a rose the other day, and you pressed it in my book of symptoms. If you had not been in love and had had a little sense, you would have pressed it in some other book that I did not use every day. I think it very fitting that the rose is to be found in the section that deals with erotomania.'

Pelagia suspected the imminent collapse of a thousand pretty dreams. She remembered the confidential advice of her aunt: 'For a woman to obtain success, she is obliged either to weep, to nag, or to sulk. She must be prepared to do this for years, because she is the disposable property of the men of the family, and men, like rocks, take a long time to wear down.'

Pelagia tried to weep, but was physically prevented by a mounting sense of panic. She stood up suddenly, and just as abruptly sat down again. She foresaw an abyss opening at her feet and an army of Turks, in the form of her father, preparing to push her over the precipice. His dry dissection of her heart seemed already to have banished the magic from her imagination.

But Dr Iannis squeezed her hand, repenting already of his rude humour, and inspired to compassion by no more than the undeniable fact that it was another beautiful day. He rotated the end of his forefinger in one extremity of his moustache, and detachedly observed his daughter's attempts to produce a tear. He commenced a lengthy monologue: 'It's a fact of life that the honour of a family derives from the conduct of its women. I don't know why this is, and possibly matters are different elsewhere. But we live here, and I note the fact scientifically in the same way that I observe that there is snow on Mt Aenos in January and that we have no rivers.

'It's not that I don't like the captain. Of course he is a little mad, which is quite simply explained by the fact that he is Italian, but he is not so mad as to be completely risible. In fact I like him very much, and the fact that he plays the mandolin like an angel makes up in great measure for him being a foreigner.'

At this point the doctor wondered whether or not it would be constructive to reveal his suspicion that the captain suffered from haemorrhoids; the revelation of physical imperfections and infirmities was often 'a powerful antidote to love. Out of respect for Pelagia, he decided against it. One should not, after all, place dog-shit in Aphrodite's bed. He continued: `But you must remember that you are betrothed to Mandras. You do remember that, don't you? Technically the captain is an enemy. Can you conceive the torment that would be inflicted upon you by others when they judge that you have renounced the love of a patriotic Greek, in favour of an invader, an oppressor? You will be called a collaborator, a Fascist's whore, and a thousand things besides. People will throw stones at you and spit, you know that, don't you? You would have to move away to Italy if you wanted to stay with him, because here you might not be safe. Are you ready to leave this island and this people? What do you know of life over there? Do you think that Italians know how to make meat pie and have churches dedicated to St Gerasimos? No, they do not.

`And another thing. Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. But sometimes the petals fall away and the roots have not entwined. Imagine giving up your home and your people, only to discover after six months, a year, three years, that the trees have had no roots and have fallen over. Imagine the desolation. Imagine the imprisonment.

'I say to you that to marry the captain is impossible until our homeland is liberated. One can only forgive a sin after the sinner has finished committing it, because we cannot allow ourselves to condone it whilst it is still being perpetrated. I admit this possibility, indeed I would be happy with it. Perhaps you do not love Mandras any more. Perhaps there is an equation to be balanced, with love on one side and dishonour on the other. No one knows where Mandras is. He may not be amongst the living.

`But this means that you have a love that will be indefinitely delayed. Pelagia, you know as well as I do that love delayed is lust augmented. No, don't look at me like that. I am not ignorant or stupid, and I was not born yesterday. Also I am a doctor and I deal not in impossible moral commands but in demonstrable facts. No one can tell me that just because someone is young, good-looking, well-educated and sensible, they are not also inflamed. Do you think I don't know that young girls can be eaten by desire? I am even resigned to the possibility that my dear little daughter may be in such a state. Don't hang your head, you should not be ashamed. I am not a priest, I am a doctor, my attitude is anthropological, and besides, when I was young... well, that's enough of that. Suffice it to say that I am not prepared to be a hypocrite or to affect a sudden and amenable amnesia.

`But this gives us even more problems, does it not? When we are mad we lose control of ourselves. We become driven. This is why our forefathers chose to control the natural madness of the young by tarring it with shame. This is why in some places they still hang out the blotted sheet on the bridal morning. I saw one in Assos last week when I was called to that broken arm, remember? If we were not made ashamed of this beautiful thing then we would do nothing else. We would not work, we would be inundated with babies, and because of this there would be no civilisation. In short we would still be in the caves, mating relentlessly and without discrimination. If we had not reserved a time and a place, and forbidden it in other times and places, we would be living like dogs, and life would possess little beauty or peace.

'Pelagia, I am not telling you to be ashamed. I am a doctor, not a maker of civilisations who wants people to stop enjoying themselves so that a village might be built. But imagine if you got pregnant! Stop pretending to be shocked, who knows what one might do in a moment of passion? These things are possible, they are natural consequences of natural things. What do you think would happen? Pelagia, I would not help you to abort a child, even though I know how. To speak plainly, I would not be a party to the murder of an innocent. What would you do? Go to one of these midwives or wise-women who kill half their clients and leave the rest permanently sterile? Would you have the child, only to find that no man would ever marry you? Many such women finish up as prostitutes, take my word for it, because suddenly they find that they have nothing left to lose and no way to keep body and soul together. But Pelagia, I would not abandon you as long as I live, even under such circumstances. But imagine if I should die. Don't grimace, we all owe a death to nature, it can't be helped. And what if the captain could not marry you because the Army forbids it? What then? 'And are you aware that there are foul diseases attendant upon improvident actions in this regard? Can you be completely sure that our captain has not been visiting that brothel? Young men are infinitely corruptible in this one matter, however honourable they may be otherwise, and the Army has made it easy by supplying a brothel. Do you know what syphilis can do? It makes the body disintegrate and the brain go mad. It causes blindness. The children of syphilitics are born deaf and cretinous. What if the captain goes there and closes his eyes and imagines that it is you in his arms? Such a thing is very likely, although it pains me to say so, young men being what they are.'